Decompositions​:​Volume Number One

Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.Download includes a 16-plus page grimoire of illustrations, mandalic forms, and handwritten lyrics.OUT NOW on CD and 2xLP! Use the link to our bigcartel page, found on the right hand side of this page.

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Compact Disc (CD)

The packaging for Decompositions: Volume Number One is essentially a scaled down version of the 2xLP. It consists of a full color, illustrated gatefold jacket featuring metallic ink, and includes a separate 16 page booklet containing handwritten lyrics and additional designs created by Drew Speziale.
Includes unlimited streaming of Decompositions:Volume Number One
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credits

released 21 December 2012

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Anthony Stubelek at Rockstudio, Brunswick GA.
Produced by Circle Takes the Square and Anthony Stubelek.
All artwork hand-drawn and designed by Drew Speziale
All music and artwork:
(c) & (p) Gatepost Recordings 2011,2012,2013

contact / help

Bring forth the Light,
To raze colonies
In a single cleansing breath.
Don't sleep, my queen;
The sun rises one less time
Than it will set.
Now overhead, the stars
That guided our forebears
Have turned to dust.
And underfoot, the churning
Framework of this earth
Succumbs to rust.

Bring forth the Light.

These dreams of Thunder displace,
Dismantled spirit's burnt bare-
Sylphs in the shards resounding,
"Open to the Field!"
Depatterned, floating in Grace,
Mapping the fragments...
"For to awaken and reassemble,
Enter by the narrow gates."

All has been inscribed
In the footnotes of time,
From the rising dead
To the falling rains;
From these proving grounds
To the burial mounds
Of fallen satellites'
Skeletal remains.

From a timeworn note's
Subtle feeling-tone,
To the coiled scales
In this mistaken mode.
Felt the birch bark walls
Of the temple shake,
When those who from heaven,
To this earth came.

From Eleusia
To the Killing Fields;
From the Promised Land
To the coming plague;
From the trenches of
Every whispered war,
To the future wreckage
Of the Large Array.

For the gate is wide,
And the way is broad,
That delivered me
(Insufferable in-between)
From the fleeting dawn
To this endless night,
In the labyrinth
Of the Iron Kings.

Now my footsteps take precedence as the traffic sounds fade,
And this city's lungs have purged their last breath.
I'm held captive at the curb before the World's End Lane,
Where I pledge my self to uncertainty.
From this shattered breaking point each new step must be
Nothing short of the saddest act of sorcery.
In search of that fleeting adversity,
O, merciless emptiness, that used to possess me...

So farewell Persephone, at rest on the altar,
Who dared to merge stone with the skies.
What curses of men guard the bridges you built, dear?
What doorways, what star-gates have you left behind?
So I'm following stardust, what's left of the twilight,
To get to that last jagged line.
To the edge of the earth by the age of rebirth.
I'll dissolve, end this realm, and reclaim what is mine.

Take in the knitting air,
Part with the cleansing breath,
Destiny turns the soils in which we manifest.
Suffer the burning coals,
Yield to the spiral tides,
Peer into the darkness, that all may be defined.

Crossing this fertile
Expanse,
To commune with the life-less...
Spirit narrative,
Rite of passage;
Progress is paralysis
When poison is my path.
I'm laid to rest,
Just to rise again.

Hell-bent circuits-
Shadows speak through the frequencies.
Heaven-sent asylum-
One psychotic break and the veil recedes.
Channeling devastating
Revelations of the method

From the other side of Somewhere.
From the endless halls of Elsewhere.

In some mythic story arc I wake;
Hand pick your pleasure, feast, then fall from grace.

Fabled
Decline;
Within
The text
Resides
My next
Shape Shift
Time Slip.

Listless,
When the hammer drops.
To be still,
When the narrative breaks down.
Holding centre
Under shelter
Of this altered state.
At rest,
In the restlessness
That was forged
In this state of changing phase.
All structure failing:
God's forsaken sanctuary.

In field of view
Her solid state
Our passing tryst
Just melts away
Sublimate
The Great Divide
The Grand Design
Defected
Solidify
The Great Divide
Our cells collide
The Grand Design

From the chambered heart of Nowhere
(Where the feedback feeds on echoes).

Baiting the feral
Demise,
On the heels of Culture...
Another crippling analysis,
Unraveled
Dreams now interpret me,
At the trail's end of this
False Awakening.

Track Name: Way Of Ever-Branching Paths

iii. Way Of Ever-Branching Paths

"Reality is not always probable, or likely."
-Jorge Luis Borges

At your doorstep
Cloaked in negative space
First frost aches
To lay its claim

At the threshold
Between without and within
First foot prints
Disgrace the virgin soil
Ignoring refusal
Let the winter in
Indian Summer
Defiant forever
Let winter have its way

Through hollow insides
Made of branching halls
First step falls

Vanishing reasons
I chose this course
Death is in season
Inward to source
INITIATION
Vanishing reasons
I chose this course
DISINTEGRATION
Death is in Season
Step inside...
One thousand faces
Stare back from their fractured origin

In turn
Turn another corner
And lose my place
A blue print for disorder
The Way of Disarray

Dionysus, good heavens
You've gone to pieces
In search of closure, you went within...
Everything and Nothing
Clashed
In counter movements,
Rotating spins-
A dream,
A dream
And nothing more.

Chart the startling curves
Of your dementia
(No way out)
Map the staggering depths
Of one dimension
(No way out)
Like clockwork witchcraft
One must suffer to pass
Suffer to Pass
Like clockwork witchcraft
My dreams now abandon me
Suffer To Pass

In time, you'll add my shadow
To your overspilling urn
And match my every move
Step for step, turn for turn

Reclaimed by a destiny I revoked
A trajectory, resigned
Writhing
In surrender
Storm clouds gather in this altered state

Hard-wired
To the recklessness of perception
Bathed in artificial light
Steeped in fabricated time
Storm clouds gather in this altered state

Ever-spinning,
The Great Wheel:
Void of progress.

Ever-Branching,
The Great Work:
Grieve the dying
Dying art
Art of process

Tunnel visions
Wander without aim
Through the Gauntlet.

Spirit Guides,
Forward Exits-
Disembodied nights
Shrouded in war paint;
Losing mind
To behold
The Other side

Track Name: The Ancestral Other Side

iv. The Ancestral Other Side

"He who dies before he dies, does not die when he dies"
-Abraham of Santa Clara

Take hold
If we fall before we fall, we do not fall when we fall through
Take hold
If we fall before we fall, we do not fall when we
Take hold
If we fall before we fall, we do not fall
Take hold
If we fall before we fall, we do

There are forces at work here beyond
This Realm of Self in which we reside
A call to consciousness with no response
Another view from that vanquished other side

May this healing crisis
Unmask the faceless
All those who occupied my peripheries

Engaging only this moment,
While the patterns erase
Mandalic sand
BATHED IN BLOODLINES
A desperate plea to stay present,
In the ember's embrace

Non-attachment retreats
In a pillar of steam
Another mantra in splinters
At the Maker's feet
Precepts deconstructed,
Focus, going astray
I refuse to Burn
Falling Forward

Through fevered visions,
Silence devouring its own tail.
Unbroken circle,
Grant us the crisis needed to heal,
Through fevered visions,
Silence devouring its own tail.
Unbroken circle,
Grant us the crisis needed to heal.

Track Name: Prefaced By The Signal Fires

V. Prefaced By The Signal Fires

Hanging in the balance
Between the pauses of the second hand
So long awake...
IN WAIT
(Four colours cloud the sky)
IN WAIT
(Red rivers dripping dry)
Our bottomless well of wishes, drained

Igniting in the vacuum
Between the friction and the everlasting flame
Lifetimes amass, dormant...
I WAIT
(Backlit volcanic shore)
I WAIT
(Five pointed star is born)
As it is in the Void, so it is under my skin

Posing in prayer on the South Rim
Shrouding the ridgeline in Softness
Finding peace where Endings begin

Premonitions
Of a quickening pace,
At the rock face
Brushing with broader streaks

Treat the symptom
Of a paradigm shifting,
No lantern burns long
In this cavity
Flickering
In and out of Becoming
TOTEM EMERGING

Tied
In the mind's eye
Pendulum is pacing
Blind
In the psyche
Sliding scale of belief
Is tipping
Transmutations
Prefaced by the signal fires

Intuition
Scrivened pigment and clay,
Past lives play out at each stage
In this gallery
Wavering
Archetypes intervening
On the walls of a hand painted cave

I confess,
You are a stunning mess-
Unbetrothed to a single spectrum.
I digress,
No vow of permanence
Has a deep-rooted hold
On its host-
Mycelial
Massacre
Gnawing away
(They're gnawing away)
These tracks I laid.

And the praise it was fraudulent
Nothing sacred in my fingerprints
Shed my skin as a parting gift
SLASH AND BURN, and start again
Through the lens of predation
Monochrome interpretations
Only fit for the color-starved
Strip-mine my flesh, I WILL ASCEND

At a cut throat crawl
Traverse the grounds of decay
At a cut throat crawl
To erode at a glacial pace

In this world of wounds
Transcend with hands in the earth
In this world of wounds
To amend with hands in the dirt

Off course in the crooked rain
Always chasing a distant flame
(At a glacial pace)
Untwine yet another braid
Clutch this tangled cord

In this world of wounds
We can heal with hands in the earth
In this world of wounds
Climb forevermore
EVerandeverandEVERandeverandevER

(balance can never be restored...)
"Sorrowing, Sighing, Bleeding and Dying"
New hymnals sound from the mouth of a cave
(...will never be restored)
The chosen betrayed us, worshipful conquest
Healers in ash at the foot of a stake
Wild waters forgotten
In violent eruption
OUR TOTEM EMERGES
Field and fountain
Moor and mountain
WAITING...

For the Sign

Track Name: A Closing Chapter (Scarlet Rising)

VI. A Closing Chapter (Scarlet Rising)

(All awash in
Scarlet rising
Bloodbath birth marking
A passing age)

Adoration
For the elder gods
Was a closing chapter
Now the sky
Is a vacant throne

Apparitions
Patterns we projected
Shake me out of slumber
Pull me back
To the deep unknown

Overlooking the slaughter
Suspended in time
Staring out from the amber
Overlooking a scene from the slaughter

RITUALIZE THE COLLAPSE

Through and Through
The Future Past
Through and Through

(...all awash in, scarlet rising...)

Track Name: Singing Vengeance Into Being

VII. Singing Vengeance Into Being

I'll depart, when the lights overhead have all but one burnt out,
In a slow procession dragging every shadow, every doubt.
What pioneers precede me? Cloven footprints left behind
On a land base cut so clear, white trails blazed across the skies.
Some spin wild in praise, most just need to save ourselves:
A people out of time, who have lost the will to HOWL...

From four legs
Fortnights
Withhold the rest begged of weary eyes.
What rot-refusing cemetery
Pines for all our kind?

From two wings
On high
Patterned flight ignites an ink-blot sky.
What fearful blackened symmetry
Reflects our soul's design?

This is no place for the noble or young
Born with the taste of blood on our tongues
TO FORGET / TO FORGIVE
With a hatchet buried deep
(Under Lapsing Time)

Illumination lost its bearing.
Eliminated light:
Left her bereaved.
Kaleidoscopic grief
Tightening its noose.
Now decoherent speech
Is all that rings as true.
Force your words through the gale
Of circling fan blades,
Just to hear another voice...

Shudder in the quake
Of pending Eschatons
Hatchet buried deep
With a paradise we lost
FORGIVEN / FORGOTTEN
Drafting my swan song

Track Name: Arrowhead As Epilogue

IV. Arrowhead As Epilogue

Long of tooth
Many rings now in tow
Return
Another cycle brought to its close
Grant the heavens thirty years
To make good on their word
Bow your head, now, in surrender
Saturn
Return

Devoured
Descendants
RIVERS FLOW
Currents damned will never veer
Devoured
Descendants
ELDERS GROW
Branches shorn shall never bear
The burden of the seer
For sight is both a blessing and a curse
To resurrect the Trickster's song
We declare the Arrowhead as Epilogue

Open windows
Tangled antlers
Crossing over
Through the caverns
Seeking answers

On the record this is regret
Passages in-progress
Pass for memories

For the record this is contact
All my words fail
When we meet in dreams

Off the record you were laughing
In the crashing waves
Gone with the tides
Wading out to the sea

May those crooked spears of light guide you home
May you carry no more crushing weight
A soul displaced
From it's herd of white buffalo

Return...
Return to The Source.
Awaken...
Awake from this dream,
Wake from this dream.

Explorations in decay:
Inthisdatastreamdeliriumthemethodisthemaze
Its just the fingerprints on a photograph, a wrong turn off the branching path
Give me station,
Some awareness,
In this static aftermath.

Rising from the ashes
Out of the empty
Halls of vacuity
Caesura breaks, Dreamer...
AWAKE
(Adrift in revery)
AWAKE
(Sleepwalking effigies)
As it is in my blood, so it is in the Night Sea

Growing in the silence
Within the womb of a long expectant pause
Timely demise, new worlds...
ARISE
(Water gives way to Fire)
ARISE
(Nature's enduring choir)
We must turn the old leaf, that we may pen a new page
Burning offerings for a dying age

Track Name: North Star, Inverted

V. North Star, Inverted

In circular dance
We call down the craft
Face the end

"Gods arrive
On the wings of the wind
Fade to black
How the mighty descend
Gods arrive
On the wings of the wind
Fade to black"
So it begins...

Out of body
Torn out of time
Diseased
Centers align
Revelations
Storm cloud swept signs
Whirlwind revolutions
Drifting by
At ease
Within decline
Out of body
Torn out of time
Grace redefined

Elliptical Trance
Flared prominence
Magnetic draft
Face the end...

The future can't sleep,
It doesn't need to,
It dreams standing up like the statues
In the gardens we'll pass through-
Past the guardians at the gatepost,
The Light: how it gives and it takes.

Pitch black, the poles lost their grip,
Let the axis reverse-
Precious balance of mind now disturbed...
This world, it slips and tears.
And if the smoke ever clears,
Will the southern skies now host The Northern Lights?
Let's make pretend:

"It was all a delusion,
It's all in your head.
It was all an illusion,
Like gold out of lead."

The present can't see,
It is blind but has visions
Of pillage and pilgrimage,
The purging of empires-
Tyrants, their treasonous wars...
Then without warning its done.

A clean slate just feels like a dead weight,
The burdens of surface stone
Scrapes skin from bones,
As we crawled across dark parking lots,
Felt the forest floor cringe...
And let the cities cave in.

The past lost its voice,
It can't speak but was spoken for
By pundit and prophet...
Until the dust clouds around us
Eroded our embellished belief
In some fixed history.

Could we recognize
Symbols made of smoke?

Across the canopy,
That soft-spoken sky,
Burnt by the torchlight
As we chart out the ley-line.
Pray the earth it won't break one more time,
All the voices we heard
As we followed the fault lines.

Devoured, digested, cast out...

Decomposed.

"Gods arrive
Line of dark chariots
Starlight dies
I can't bury it yet
Wheels of fire
Swing they so low
Fade to black
Carry us home"

Polaris slips her tongue
Through a kiss made out of cinders,
In a marriage of chemicals.
The sky's sulphur heart,
carved-out veins of slate,
The pulse of the earth-
How it sinks and it slows.

An oil corn and wine coated keystone,
The archway, two columns (now ash and dust)
Frame this path for us,
The undeserved-
Brought low and unpreserved
From this unhallowed gaze, we profane;
The cursed abandon the weak,
To stagger on in a stolen display
Of confusion, of faith.

The North Star, she nods out,
Doused her torch, left us forever
Without promise or penance.
We're left to merge with the trench,
Taught the cruelties that it takes to survive.
"Just accept to be free."

I used to waste my skin,
Shed my time, change my colors,
Until I settled for peace...
In death, an emerald sea stands before me
Unveiled but unbowed-
Each wave's a rainbow of sound.

Could we recognize
Any signal in the noise?

Across that static sea,
O, crestfallen sky
Yearn for the currents
That carved out the ley-line.
Pray the earth it won't break one more time,
All the voices we heard
As we followed the fault line.
Pray the earth it won't break,
All the voices we heard as we followed.
Pray the earth it won't break,
All the voices we heard as we followed the fault lines.